“Yes,” he said, but he wasn’t as sure as he sounded. Catie remained skittish. It might take him far longer than a single rugby season to convince her that she could trust him to keep his word. But Danny hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by giving up. He’d teach Catie to trust him, step by small step.

What if it doesn’t work?

A whisper from the back of his brain where his fears liked to hide.

What if she never trusts you enough to commit?

Danny had been running from that thought since the day he realized they were more to each other than just friends, and he kept on running from it the rest of the day. It became far, far easier when one of his housemates came up with a delivery order that had just been left at their door.

“Chicken soup for you,” Daichi said in Japanese. “Smells good.”

“Thanks, Daichi,” Danny said in the same language; he was far from fluent, but he could understand most simple sentences now as long as he had the vocabulary—which he continued to add to, day by day.

“No problem.” This time it was in English, Daichi as invested in improving his conversational English as Danny was in improving his Japanese. The two of them often spent an hour over a beer, each speaking the other’s language.

When Danny checked the receipt after Daichi left, he found Catie’s name on it. She’d ordered him food all the way from New Zealand. His heart went all soft, and he didn’t care. They’d be fine, he told himself as he opened up the soup. No need to imagine problems that didn’t exist.

But that night, as he lay down to sleep, he found himself wide-awake and staring at the ceiling, that scary “what if” question circling and circling in his mind. The chicken soup had been wonderful, but Catie was wonderful. Her willingness to look after her friends and family had never been the problem.

He fell into a fitful sleep hours later and had no answers by the time he woke… but he did have a message from Catie: Brush your teeth, hotshot. It was followed by the emoji of a tooth.

A snort burst out of him. Yeah, Catie got his weird sense of humor.

As for the what-ifs, they could wait. Because he was planning on fighting for Catie and fighting hard.

A month after Danny’s hospital stay, Catie saw that she had a three-week block of open time coming up. She’d still have to keep up her training, but she could do that anywhere as long as she set up a stable routine.